Jane Castor, mayor of Tampa, Florida, shares the evacuation orders she's issued among other preparations as the city braces for the impacts of Hurricane Helene this Thursday, Sept. 26.
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00:00joining us now is Tampa Mayor Jane Castor. Mayor Castor, thank you again for joining us once again
00:06and again as you take a look at the forecast, you take a look at the impacts, what are your
00:10primary concerns ahead of the storm? Well our primary concerns are that our residents are aware
00:18of what's going on and that they have prepared themselves. We as a municipality have prepared
00:26as we do every year, always hoping for the best but preparing for the worst and in this particular
00:33with Helene, it's going to be as everybody likes to call it, that dirty side of the storm
00:40where it's coming up and bringing that storm surge into our bay. Estimated now anywhere between
00:49five to eight feet of storm surge and that is what we're very worried about. All right, if that's
00:56what you're worried about then we want to know if your teams are preparing for Helene maybe differently
01:02than other storms in the past. No, we're preparing the same way. We're looking at, we've already got
01:08evacuation orders mandatory for our Zone A residents and businesses and then we've been
01:15working to ensure that all of our storm drains are are clean so that we can
01:23send this storm water out as quickly as possible but we have had unprecedented rain events
01:32lately. I mean five inches in less than an hour at our airport which was literally historical
01:38and so we're doing all that we can to address those high water issues in our low-lying areas.
01:46Yeah, it's been such a wet month so far. Mayor Castor, you mentioned about the evacuations.
01:52How are they progressing and what do you want Tampa residents and visitors to do now
01:59and this evening to be ready? Yes, they are progressing well. You know, the way that
02:05the Tampa Bay region is geographically spread out, we have Pinellas County coming through
02:14Hillsborough County, our county, in order to evacuate and so they're moving through now and
02:20then also getting our residents and we've changed this philosophy in the past few years where
02:27you know you don't have to go to another state, just go to higher ground. Again, hiding from the
02:33wind and running from the water and so we want our residents, we have a lot of new people, we're
02:39one of the fastest growing cities in the nation and we want everybody to take this seriously.
02:45As I always say, you get in a confrontation with Mother Nature, Mother Nature wins 100% of the time
02:52so be prepared and heed the warnings. Well that's a quote we're going to be hearing a lot on the
02:56AccuWeather Network to consider that clipped and used in one of our sizzles and impressive there
03:00to talk about it. A lot of new people moving there so some folks may not be maybe as familiar
03:05with the challenges of the Tampa Bay geography. When it comes to big impacts, you know, the high
03:10winds, the massive flooding, the storm surge, what speaks to you most? The storm surge because the way
03:16that it is, you know, it's not something that people can say, well I'll just wait and see how
03:22things turn out. When that storm surge comes in at high tide, it's going to be fast and furious
03:28and so individuals need to heed the warnings and get out of the way of the water.